Saturday, July 23, 2016

Friday Books: The Map of True Places

I'm calling this book review "Friday Books," because that's what I have always called it. I'll keep calling it that, even when I post it on a day that is not Friday -- like today.

This week's book is The Map of True Places by Brunonia Barry. This is a book I picked up from a Little Free Library in Kurri Kurri, New South Wales, Australia. At the time I didn't examine it closely enough to realize that it is a book about and made in the good old USA. It lost its "romance" for me a little (but not completely) when I saw that it is not an Australian book. I still have good memories of being in Australia and finding the Little Free Library from which to take a book. (I left a book about Minnesota for them to read.) So I had fond feelings of the book while reading it, even though I didn't love the story.

The book is about a woman, Zee, who is a psychologist. Zee's client dies by suicide, which throws Zee into a soul-searching depression. She re-examines her own childhood, sorting out who she really is and where she is going (using a new "map," hence the title of the book). Her life, like all of ours, has taken some twists and turns about which she must ponder and make some decisions. Meanwhile, new twists and turns continue to happen, of course.

I would suggest this as a good vacation read - interesting, entertaining, but not great. Characters are a little too pat and predictable, but overall it's a good story.

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